VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY OUARTERLY
Vol. VII APRIL 1907 No. 3
Pg 77
Thomas Henry Malone, scholar, jurist, gentleman, the father and founder, under its Board of Trustees, of the School of Law of Vanderbilt University, and its Dean for a period of nearly thirty years, extending from its organization in 1875 to the date of his resignation in June, 1904, little more than two years before his death, was born on June 3, 1834, near the town of Athens, in the county of Limestone, Alabama.

The Tennessee, turning for a time from the bosom of its mother State and winding like a horn of plenty through the upper parts of Alabama, renders famous the valley to which it gives its name and its fertility. This rich valley early attracted the eye of well-to-do Virginians, and early in the last century they began to make settlements there, and the end of the first half of the century found the valley of the Tennessee from Florence to Huntsville famed for the high breeding, wealth, and culture of its ruling population.

Thomas Chappell Malone, the grandfather of Thomas H. Malone, in the year 1818, being then resident in the county of Sussex in Virginia, removed to the valley of the Tennessee, settling at first in Madison County, & subsequently in Lime­stone County, Ala., where he remained until his death, many of his kindred of the name accompanying him; so that when the late Rev. Doctor McFerrin, of blessed memory, came long afterwards to write of this region he said, having regard to the quality, as well as the number of those of that time, "this country was blessed with a whole legion of Malones."

A graphic and spirited picture of the Malones as they were in Virginia comes to us in a pleasant way from the late Senator John T. Mason, of Virginia. It was on this wise:

Thomas H. Malone, while a student at the University of Virginia in the fifties, was invited to ·meet some distinguished guests at the home of his own and his father's friend, Professor John B. Minor, among them being Senator Mason. The Senator being struck by the name of the young student, and having by inquiries put to him brought out the fact that the young man was the grandson of Thomas Chappell Malone, said: "Now, Mr. Malone, I know very much more of your family than you possibly can know. Shall I give you in two words the character of your people?" And then, the young student having signified that he would be glad to hear him, he continued: "Well then I and my fathers have known them for generations. I never knew one who was rich; I never knew one that was poor; I never knew one that was a genius; I never knew one that was a fool; I never knew one that would tell a lie or that would steal or that was afraid of the devil if he came with his horns on." A brave, strong, sturdy, high-minded stock, evidently.

Thomas Chappell Malone married his first cousin, Mary Chappell, who was of Huguenot extraction; and his son, James Chappell Malone, the father of the subject of these memoirs, thus received a double infusion of that blood which for centuries has demonstrated its wonderful prepotency in that intenseness which with marked uniformity characterizes its inheritors wherever it has flowed.

Following the paternal line one step farther back, we find that the great-grandmother of Thomas H. Malone was Elizabeth Tucker, a niece of the distinguished philanthropist, Mr. Wood Tucker, of Sussex County, Va., and a member of the great Tucker family of Virginia, a name that even down to our own times reflects honor upon a State that it is an honor to have been born in.

Turning now to the maternal ancestry of Thomas H. Malone, we find that his mother, Eliza Frances Hardiman Binford, was the daughter of John Mosby Binford, of Northampton County, N.C., a man long prominent in public life in that State, and Frances Littleberry Hardiman.

The original Binfords were Quakers, people of great wealth and culture, who settled in the counties of Charles City and New Kent, Va., whence the ancestors of John M. Binford subsequently removed to North Carolina.

Frances Littleberry Hardiman, the grandmother of Thomas H. Malone, and in whose veins flowed the blood of some of the highest of the Virginia aristocracy, was a daughter of Littleberry Hardiman, of Westover Parish, Charles City, Va., and Susana Lightfoot, whose father was a grandson of that Colonel Lightfoot who was a member of the King's Council, and one of the wealthiest men in Virginia of his day. Littleberry Hardiman was one of the justices of Charles City County in 1753, and a noted breeder and importer of thoroughbred horses. The winning of the Williamsburgh stake by his great horse, Mark Antony, in 1769 lingered in tradition among the old family slaves & the memory of our subject. Col. John Hardiman, the grandfather of Littleberry, and the first of the name in Virginia, was a member of the Council. wife of Col. John Hardiman was Mary Eppes, granddaughter of Lieut. Francis Eppes who came over prior to the year 1625, with 3 sons & 30 servants, & was first a member of the House of Burgesses & later the Council in 1652.

James Chappell Malone the father, who, as we have seen, was born is Sussex County, VA., about twenty miles from Petersburg, in the year 1800, whence he removed with his father to the valley of the Tennessee, in Alabama, in 1818. He married Eliza Frances Hardiman Binford, already mentioned, in whom was exemplified to a marked degree that sweet, gentle repose of manner which characterized the wellbred southern woman of the old regime. He was a man of mark both intellectually & physically, & withal had such strength of moral & religious fibre–doubtless the heritage of his Huguenot blood–that the allurements neither of social prestige nor of wealth nor of leisure could swerve him from a life of deep personal piety. The following incident will serve to give a better picture of him than words could convey: Major Falconnett, a man of fine acquirements, foreign-born, of distinguished, German ancestry, who used to be much at “Secluseval,” the Malone home called him “the Old Duke” because, as he said , he had seen no man in America with such a stately, courtly bearing.

When not more than forty-one or two years of age, having already through his enterprise and skill added sufficiently to his own patrimony and the portion received thru his wife to secure to him an ample competency, he purchased a tract of some thousand acres of land within a mile of the town of Athens, Ala., and within easy reach of his plantations, chosen with reference to its situation rather than its fertility. On it he erected a typical southern mansion, attractive alike in the generous amplitude of its space and the beauty of its architecture, and committing his plantations to the care of overseers (visiting each of them nearly every week), he devoted himself to the beautifying and care of his home, his orchards, etc., to the enjoyment of books and the chase, the rearing and training of his children, and that dignified leisure that sat so well upon the southern planter of the olden time. To his home he gave the name Secluseval. A friend of the writer, born and reared at Athens, who himself bears one of the honored names of that day, writing of Judge Malone, thus speaks of Secluseval as it was in the days before the Civil War: “The typical roomy, elegant home of his then wealthy, aristocratic parents was noted for its lavish, genuine, but unostentatious, hospitality. It was one of some half score homes in or very near Athens, noted for the honesty of purpose, refinement, culture, and learning of the indwellers; the homes of the Colemans, Vassers, Richardsons, Malones, Featherstones, Lockarts, and a few others.”

Not only was the family at home thus in the midst of cultured and refined homes, but, in accordance with the prevailing custom at the South in those days, they would every year in the summer, make extended visits to kinspeople in other like communities; some of them quite aristocratic ones, where, taking horses and carriages and wagons with their servants, ect., they would spend four or six weeks in visiting from home to home, the visits to be returned in like manner in the autumn or winter. Moreover, they kept in touch with their kindred and friends in Virginia by the occasional interchange of visits, and through an occasional visit by some member of the family to the White Sulpher Springs of Virginia – that magic fountain whose waters have the peculiar property of enriching Virginian blood, while making other bloods feel, at least, thinner! Thus they kept their hearts warm, expanded and enriched their minds, and cultivated the manners that give that indescribable charm to the well-bred southerner. This ideally charming home life at Secluseval, Thomas H. Malone enjoyed form the time he was eight years old. He had, in the first place, been born into the very midst of the family, being the fifth of nine children, and was thus, so to speak, surrounded by affection. To the love of his mother there was added the love of the black mammy, “Rinda” (her name is given because her love for him entitles her name to be placed beside his own), barely less strong than it; and he devoured with delight, from the lips of the big, black “foreman,” “Berry,” those stories that Uncle Remus long after gathered from the rich store of negro folklore. He had learned to ride a horse at a time beyond the reach of his recollection and at ten was an expert shot with the rifle; and, when a mere boy, able to bring down his first deer with a long rifle from the back of a thoroughbred, and that, too, after having to remove a bad cap and replace it with a good one, without losing his head in the operation.

He thus had everything to make his life happy. But there were some things to make him unhappy, too, and there were clouds that, had they not been happily rifted or dispelled, might have brought blight with their shadows. One source of his boyish troubles lay in his religious environment. Not only was his father a very religious man, a Methodist—the prevailing faith in that region (though he had married a lady who was Episcopalian by birth if not by actual church membership), but the community itself was an intensely religious one. Very strict notions prevailed concerning the observance of Sunday, etc. He was himself rigidly orthodox in faith touching such things; and from this, indeed, his troubles arose, for the very orthodoxy of his belief intensified in his mind the gravity of his obliquity in practice. But this is best told by himself in the charming memoirs prepared by him for his children and grandchildren. He says: “I believe that most of the leading families in the Tennessee Valley were at that time Methodists. A few were Presbyterians and still fewer were Episcopalians. It was an awfully religious community, and, however they might differ in other things, they all believed that Jews, Roman Catholics, and Unitarians, together with all boys who failed to go to church or who played on the 'Sabbath,' as they called it, were headed straight for hell. I myself believed this with my whole soul; and as I hated to go to church and would always steal out and go rabbit hunting or gather nuts on Sunday, I at a very early day came to the conclusion that I was certainly elected to be damned. It was curious that having such views, and with occasional desperate forebodings, I still went ahead.... I don't think, in fact, that I was any worse than my sons—except that I constantly and consciously did things for which I was sure that the devil would get me.”

Preachers of that day more than this, perhaps, fell, broadly speaking, into two classes: those whose ruling passion was the love of God, and those in whom the motive power was hatred of the devil—both good in their way doubtless, but the first got nearest the boy's heart. Two of these, the late Dr. A. L. P. Green and that saintly bundle of eccentricities, the Rev. Elisha Carr, whom everybody knew and loved as “Brother Carr,” he very greatly loved.

Another source of unhappiness with him was his extreme aversion to going to school. He was brimful of life and animal spirit and showed unusual capacity from an early age, but his energies were expended in mischief and fun, and he studied just hard enough to keep himself above the whipping line. At length, when he was about twelve or thirteen, his father's strong will came to the rescue and held him in the right path until he had the good fortune to fall into the hands of a teacher who, being not only very learned but also a very strong character, soon so inspired him at once with a love of learning and contempt for unthoroughness that his feet, thereafter obeying his own will, to hold upon the path of duty and never again faltered on the way to learning and success.

His father's part was through an interview in the “solemn parlor” at the end of a school term, to give him to understand that, instead of a vacation with friends and “Lewis and Scott” (faithful servants who were the special guardians of the boys) and the hounds at home and the rounds of visits away, he should, on account of his poor record at school, spend the entire summer at labor with the negroes in the field; and this he did, going out at daylight and returning at night, taking his dinner in the field. At the end of the summer his father told him that if he should at the end of the next term lead his class, as his teacher had said his capacity would easily enable him to do, he would do his best to give him a fine vacation the next year; but that if he permitted anybody to beat him in his class he should not only be sent to the fields again for the next summer but receive a thrashing besides.

There was no more trouble about class standing, or good times in vacation. But the great turning point in his school life was, as above intimated, when he came under the rule of a Mr. Mendum, a teacher to whom he was sent when thirteen. Of him Judge Malone says: “When I was about thirteen years of age, by good fortune I fell into the hands of a Mr. Mendum. Mr. Mendum was a school-teacher, a stern, hard man, utterly fearless and with no great sympathy with the troubles of boys. He was famous for severe whippings, and his school was the resort of most of the hard cases in the county. He was, however, a man of great learning, of an exceedingly powerful mind, sharp, incisive, clear, and yet broad. For a while I stood in great terror of him and worked fearfully. I had been with him for two or three months when he announced, as school was about to be closed for the day, 'Thomas, you will remain!' I kept my seat in fear and trembling, trying my best to remember which one of my probable escapades might have come to his memory; I was quite sure I had not been derelict in my studies. When the others were gone he said: 'You have been a very good boy, sir. Your classmates have been holding you back. Your Cousin Sarah [Mrs. Mendum] has requested me to put you in a class by yourself. I shall hear your recitations at recess and you may sit in the house or out as you choose.'

“Well, after that, I was a good boy, and I was the leader of the school until I went away to college. Mr. Mendum taught me French and Latin so thoroughly that in my old age I am almost as familiar with these languages as with English. He taught me how to work and to feel a contempt for everything that was not absolutely thorough. I think that I owe to him the fact that I improved the opportunities which were afterwards given to me to get a thorough education, and I am quite sure that I owe it to him alone that I was able to secure the Master's Degree at the University of Virginia at a time when it was said that no one had ever been able to do so except one who had been educated at the Coleman School or some other one of the great Virginia preparatory schools.”

After two years spent with Mr Mendum the latter, one day near the close of the term (and at a time that seemed suspiciously near to a recent fight between young Malone and another boy), suddenly stopped walking the floor of the schoolroom and said : “Thomas I want to say to you that you are the best scholar I ever taught, and I am going to make your father send you to college. You have been with me long enough.” So at the age of fifteen, when he had already read more Latin than was required for the whole course, and as much Greek as was required up to the senior course (the foundation in Greek, as in Latin, had been laid for him by a learned Scotchman, even before his days with Mr Mendum), he entered LaGrange College, Alabama), where the first year he made the maximum grade in every recitation heard. He returned the next year, but, his course being interrupted about the close of the first term by a serious illness that threatened his life, he returned home upon his convalescence and in March 1851, thereafter was sent to the University of Virginia at his own request. Thus when not quite seventeen Thomas H Malone found himself upon the threshold of that great seat of learning with the purpose of striving for the Master's Degree. its highest honor. He brought a letter from his father to Dr. John B. Minor, one of its professors, his warm personal friend, who received him with open arms and whose house was henceforth a home to him, though he boarded elsewhere. The result of the first half year's work (he entered in March) was somewhat disappointing. He offered for graduation in chemistry and Latin; in the former he passed, but to that very worthy man and learned scholar, Dr. Gessner Harrison. professor of Latin, graduation in his school after only three month's work, and without having studied his grammar, was a thing not to be thought of, and so, while admitting that the candidate had a much greater and more thorough knowledge of Latin than anybody else in the class, he “threw him”. The next year he offered successfully in Latin, moral philosophy, and natural philosophy. The succeeding year. 1852-53, he was attacked by typhoid fever in June and was unable to take the examinations of that year. This threw upon him very heavy work, including review examinations, in his final year; but he completed all of the prescribed schools and passed all review examinations and received the degree of Master of Arts in June of 1854, though he suffered a serious breakdown in health afterwards from which he was some months in rallying.

An amusing incident connected with his final examination in modern languages that year arose from his handing in his examination papers in somewhat less than two hours on an examination that usually required four. Prof. Scheie De Vere, the professor in that school, and his particular friend, interpreted his early handing in his papers to mean failure and, knowing that failure meant the loss of the Master's Degree, sought him frantically and called him back hoping to induce him to try again. When he was made satisfied through hurried questions, much to his pleasure though somewhat to his amazement, that all of his questions had been fully answered, he seized both of his young friend's hands and gave him his hearty congratulations.

The Master's Degree meant much, but it was far from including all that was meant by the time thus spent at the University and elsewhere in the State of Virginia. For the intercourse this afforded with men and women of birth, culture, and learning, both at the University and at the homes of friends visited during vacations, was a liberal education in itself.

As already stated the home of Professor Minor was a home for him. He was expected to join that family at table every Sunday for his meals and was in addition invited there at other times; sometimes to meet distinguished guests, as, for example, the great Matthew Fontaine Maury and his daughters, with whom he spent a week at the Minor home, when he had the rare privilege of listening to the learned yet charming talk of that Savant about the Sea. At another time an invitation to spend the Christmas holidays at the elegant country home of Judge Alexander Rives, brother of the Hon. William C Rives, ex-minister to France, brought him in contact not only with the members of that elegant household, but with the ex-minister and his wife and their daughter, Miss Amelie, who, born in France and bearing the name of the French Queen who had stood godmother to her and had given her her own name, had that ease and grace and charm of manner which only a residence in Paris could give, and which it is a rare privilege for a young man to see. Again visits to university friends introduced him to the homes of the Nelsons, Pages, Berkeleys, Minors, Boilings, and others whose names are a part of Virginia.

Among his closest friends at the University were Charles M. Fenner and Howell E. Jackson; they, together with Charles M. Blackford and himself, constituting indeed, “The Inseparable Quartette” as long as the four remained at the University. Of these, Mr Fenner afterwards sat upon the Supreme Bench of Louisiana, and is still one of the most, if not the most, distinguished lawyers of that State; Mr. Jackson, as is well known, was elevated to the Supreme Bench of the United States. Of those added later to the list of intimate friends were Edward S. Joynes, Alexander L. Nelson, Francis H. Smith, and Crawford Howell Toy, the latter a very distinguished Oriental scholar and long the professor of Semitic languages at Harvard University; and all have borne conspicuous and honorable parts as professors.

The writer has the very great pleasure to give here the valued contributions that follow from Professor Toy and Judge Fenner.

A request made upon the suggestion of his kinsman and friend MB Howell Esq. of this city has brought the following charming recollections from Professor Toy:

At the University of Virginia Thomas Malone and I had rooms near together on the West Lawn from October 1853 to June 1856 sic and I saw much of him. With us, Segar, MB Howell, Bouldin Roberts, and a few others were closely associated and our talks in college, fashion traversed the whole field of literature and life. He was a ready talker full of matter with great power of expression and with a hearty often enthusiastic or intense manner that fixed the attention and gave charm to what he said. College taste was beginning to leave Scott's poetry and Malone defended Scott vigorously his own temperament was in sympathy with the poet's manly and open-air tone. He had a natural gaiety that was infectious, his hearty laugh often rang out in our cloisterlike arcade and occasionally he would go out and give a view halloo that awoke the echoes of the lawn. He stood for all that was fresh and straightforward and spontaneous. I remember that once when Dr McGuffey the professor of philosophy had a meeting of a few students in his lecture room for the discussion of some subject. Malone as the debate was about to begin exclaimed Lay on Macduff and damned be he who first cries hold enough a quotation that he made in all innocence not thinking of a personal application to the professor Dr McGuffey however did not smile. Malone was a faithful and successful student with a large intelligence and wide literary sympathies. He had great social gifts and was a welcome visitor in many families in the University circle and in Charlottesville. I never heard a bitter word from him. He had positive opinions and was the outspoken enemy of all things mean and unbecoming a gentleman but he had charity for the errors and follies of college life. For his friends he was Tom Malone always affectionately remembered for his genial nature and honored for his intellectual and moral qualities. I saw him only once after we left college and then only for a few moments.

Crawford Howell Toy, Harvard University.

Judge Fenner of New Orleans thus charmingly writes of his long time friend:

One of the most delightful associations of my life was my lifelong friendship with Thomas H Malone. Our intimacy began at the University of Virginia considerably more than a half century ago.

The death of Judge Malone leaves me the sole survivor of a quartette of youths who were thrown together at the University and there formed relations of almost romantic friendship with each other which lasted unbroken throughout their lives. The four were Howell E Jackson of Tennessee, Thomas H Malone of Alabama, Charles M Blackford of Virginia, and myself from Louisiana. They became roommates and occupied communicating rooms on the Western Lawn. They christened their den with the fantastic name of The Realm of Realities. Realized by which designation it was known and laughed over by their fellow students.

While active in the social life of the University and not averse to participation in most of the fun and mischief which went on, I must say that they were all earnest and ambitious students and won diplomas in all the branches in which they entered. The most brilliant scholastic success was that of Malone who won the degree of Master of Arts of the University of Virginia, then justly regarded as the highest and most difficult scholastic degree in America, so difficult indeed that a very limited number of students ever attempted or achieved it.

On coming to the bar, Thomas H Malone located in Nashville Tenn where his entire professional life was passed. His professional qualifications and career are known to all Tennesseans and need no commentary at my hands. He devoted his attention mainly to chancery practice and in response to many inquiries, I have made of persons competent to judge, I never encountered a dissent from the opinion that he was one of the profoundest equity lawyers the State of Tennessee has produced.

His unselfish services as professor in the Law Department of Vanderbilt University are equally well known. From my knowledge of him, I cannot doubt that he must have been an able and an inspiring teacher.

In all my long and varied contact with men I never encountered, a whiter soul or a more charming personality. He was a rarely distinctive type of the old time southern gentleman, bluff, frank, hearty, impulsive, unpretentious, tenacious of his dignity, sensitive as a girl in everything affecting honor, strong in his prejudices, true as steel to his friends, generous to a fault with hand, open as the day to melting charity. The changes wrought by the war in social habits and manners passed unheeded by him. To the end of his days he lived his life as he had been used and had learned to live it in the old South before the war with the same habits customs and ideals. As fox hunting had been the sport of his youth it remained his favorite sport to the end.

The formalities and elaborate functions of modern social life had no attraction for him. He ordered his home as his forefathers had ordered theirs as the center of a simple and wholesome family life and as the seat of a generous and open handed hospitality for his friends.

He loved Nature and always lived close to Nature.

As a social companion in informal intercourse, he had a rare and peculiar charm. He had a wide and general culture ranging over broad fields of history and literature which qualified him to illuminate a vast variety of subjects. He possessed in rare degree the gift of fluent and animated conversation, suggestive, instructive, sympathetic, and always entertaining.

His philosophy of life was cheerful and optimistic always inclining to bright and charitable views, he had a keen sense of humor, and was blessed beyond most men with the faculty of contagious laughter. No one who knew him can fail to recall the resonant and ringing laugh of Tom Malone. Much more might I say but what need. He walked through life a knightly figure. clad in complete steel of honor and integrity facing the world with his visor up wearing his heart upon his sleeve, a heart so pure and clean that even daws dared not peck at it. Death in taking him away left not behind a nobler and knightlier gentleman.

The University course being ended after a period of recreation at home, he set about determining a most serious question which confronted him and pressed for solution. How he met this shall be told in his own words.

Upon the whole he says referring to the period following his return from the University, this was not a pleasant year to me, for I had to meet and decide once for all a question which had troubled me a great deal. I believe that I have already said that all of my kindred on my father's side were intensely religious people. For nearly four years moreover, I had been under the influence of Mr Minor who although not a Methodist was not inferior to them in zeal. It was his hope and my father's that I should become a minister of the gospel. I had then the idea which I have entertained all my life and by which I have tried to guide it that it is a man's duty to be in this world not for himself alone nor to consult merely his own pleasure but so to fashion his life that he could do the most he was able for others. So I seriously entertained the idea which I knew would give most pleasure to the two men whom I most loved and admired, my father and Professor Minor. Accordingly, in the winter of 55, I believe it may have been in the early part of 56,* there being a great convention of Methodist ministers at Nashville a General Conference perhaps. I went there having almost made up my mind to arrange to study for the ministry. Mr Wheless, my brother in law, and my sister were boarding at the old St Cloud Hotel and of course I went there. Dr ALP Green then perhaps the most influential minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church of the South was a friend of my family and had known me from infancy. He knew of my purpose. He made me leave the hotel and took me to his house during the Conference. I had an opportunity during this time to hear a very great deal of private discussion of the various policies suggested and of the differences existing between the members of Conference and I thought I saw evidence of a struggle for personal aggrandizement and power in the Church wholly incompatible with any ideas that I had received from my father and Mr Minor. There were at that time two or three cases pending on appeal from the Annual Conferences involving the characters of ministers. The trials were conducted as it seemed to me with as much technicality and chicane as I have ever since seen in the trial of cases in the Criminal Court. Before Conference had adjourned without explanations to any, I bade good by to all and returned to Secluseval and told my father at once that it would be impossible for me to comply with what I supposed to be his wishes. If he was disappointed in the least he gave me no intimation of it but said that what he desired above all things was my happiness and success.

*The Tennessee Conference then including North Alabama met in Nashville in October 1855. The General Conference met in Nashville in 1858.

He seriously contemplated the establishing of a high school modeled after the great Coleman School in Virginia and had entered into correspondence with several Masters of the University of Virginia whom he desired to associate with him in the project concerning it but about this time the Rev Dr Rivers then at the head of Wesleyan University at Florence Ala into which La Grange College had grown wrote his father asking him to endeavor to induce him to serve as professor of mathematics for a year in that institution until the place of the former incumbent of that chair who had recently died could be filled. Having as he felt already disappointed the wishes of his father in the matter of entering the ministry he at once accepted.

During the year spent at Florence being thrown a good deal with Judge Walker, an able lawyer subsequently one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of Alabama, that gentleman being evidently greatly impressed by his striking abilities, persistently urged him to adopt the profession of the law, bringing him law books to read and telling him constantly that practicing law and not teaching was the proper field for him. He had not before contemplated the law but had rather held to his idea of a school. He at length yielded so far as to consider the matter and at length concluded to begin the study of law. Accordingly, his father having suggested Nashville as the best place, he came in the year 1857 to Nashville and began the study of law under Russell Houston Esq., a friend of his father, the prevailing custom then being for young men to study law in a law office rather than at a law school. He was in due time granted a license to practice by two judges. Remaining for a time thereafter in the office of Messrs Houston and Brown, he subsequently opened an office of his own and after a short time was invited by his former instructor to join him as partner in a firm to be styled Houston, Vaughn and Malone. From the outset his work was marked not only by ability but by the utmost thoroughness an early instance of which was shown in the preparation of the license granted him to practice law which the judges had requested him to write and which was so full comprehensive and accurate as to cause them when they read it to prick up their judicial ears and to declare that they could hardly have written such an one themselves.

The breaking out of the Civil War and his enlistment in the Confederate army which followed shortly thereafter suspended his legal career before it had fairly begun but not too soon for him to have already attracted the favorable regard of his seniors at the bar then a very able one Mr Return J Meigs one of the ablest and next to Hon Francis B Fogg the most learned of all of them perhaps and who was a great pleader having already begun to look upon him as he pleasantly said upon his Mr Meigs's return to Nashville on a short visit after the close of the war as one who should one day succeed to his place at the bar.

He had soon after taking up his residence at Nashville joined a military company one of three constituting the Rock City Guards and that company with the other two was promptly mustered into the First Tennessee Regiment when it became manifest that war was impending. The regiment saw its first service in Virginia under General Robert E Lee and soon thereafter took part in the Romney campaign under General Stonewall Jackson. Colonel Maney of the First Tennessee Regiment having been about this time placed in command of the brigade as acting brigadier general, selected Thomas H Malone to serve as captain and assistant adjutant general on his staff and being promoted shortly after the battle of Shiloh, his regiment having been meantime transferred to the Army of the Southwest to the rank of brigadier general, appointed him upon his staff as captain and assistant adjutant general which position he held until he resigned in the spring of 1863 to assume command of a company in the Seventh Alabama Regiment of Cavalry, afterwards the Ninth commanded by his brother Col James C Malone. While serving on the staff of General Maney, he took part in the Kentucky campaign of 1862 and in the battle of Murfreesboro in December 1862. At the battle of Perryville, one of the bloodiest of the war, he led three regiments of his brigade in a gallant and successful charge upon a Federal battery and bore himself throughout the day with such courage and judgment as to win the confidence and admiration of the brigade.

Not long after his transfer to the cavalry arm of the service only a few weeks indeed his career was cut short by capture and imprisonment. An account of the closing acts in his military life in the field the writer gives in his own words from his memoirs written with that freedom and unreserve with which one speaks of himself to his children. Although intended only for the eyes of his children and grandchildren, yet its relation here as a thrilling passage in the life of a brave soldier who now sleeps will the writer feels sure find ready pardon.

Having been sent by the officer commanding the regiment some three hundred men to observe the movements of the enemy some two thousand strong who it was feared were seeking to flank and surround them and the regiment during his absence having sought to save itself by flight he attempted to regain the regiment. The spirited narrative reads:

“I started to gallop back to the command but before I got there I heard a ragged volley and cheer and when I got in sight I beheld our command running for dear life with spurs in the horses sides followed by a large column of Federal cavalry. Of course it was my duty to join the command and I thought old George could be trusted to outfoot anything the Federals had and would soon put me beyond fire, so I gave him the spur. I was riding in a direction which made an acute angle with the line of the pike. As I came within pistol shot of the column they began to call out. Look at the damned Rebel and several shots were fired at me. Out of bravado I pointed my pistol without taking aim and fired back. I soon outran the column and got into the pike. The rear of our column was then disappearing some half a mile away.”

“As I galloped on, I came up with one of our men, Whitworth by name, whose horse had fallen and severely injured himself and his rider. I stopped to see if I could do anything for him and proposed to take him behind me. He was too much injured to ride and declined but gave me his pocket book and watch and asked me to convey them to his wife who lived in Alabama south of the Tennessee in Morgan County I believe. He urged me to leave him, pointing out that the head of the Federal column was then within some fifty yards of us. As I wheeled to resume my flight an officer heading the column some thirty or forty yards called out to me, surrender you damned Rebel coward with other opprobrious epithets. I never could understand how in battle any one could have any personal feeling until that fellow cursed me in that way. I felt that it was a personal challenge and instantly wheeling old George to face him, I shook my pistol at him and said, come and take me you d____ Yankee dog I don’t think it was a fine thing in either of us to swear as we did, but men will do so on such occasions. He drew his horse down from a gallop to a slow trot and when within twenty paces fired at me. The ball passed through the broad brim of my slouched hat. Then I fired and saw the dust fly from the breast of his coat and the hand that held the pistol fall by his side. I waited a minute to see whether he desired a second shot but seeing that he was disabled, old George and I resumed our flight.”

Reaching, at length, the main body of the command (Wheeler's) to which his regiment belonged, scenes still more stirring followed rapidly as the enemy closed in; he now saving himself from the saber blow of an onrushing antagonist by a pistol ball in his right side as he raised his sword arm for the stroke; now while the main body retreats across Duck River, joining General Wheeler's bodyguard and others whom valor had drawn to the spot, in a charge upon the enemy: followed by a hand to hand fight wherein his horse being shot, and he dismounted, he extricates himself from the peril of trampling hoofs by mounting the horse of a falling foe from one side as he goes down on the other and finally the Confederate column being reported over and the rear guard then following his horse, again being shot down while crossing the river, he is run down by the wounded horse of a fellow officer as he swims, knocked insensible by the blows from his hoofs, and finds himself when consciousness returns lying on the opposite bank a prisoner.

An incident following the capture illustrates so forcibly and so beautifully the power of human kindness that the writer cannot forbear to relate it here in the words of the then prisoner himself:

"When Harris and I were taken in charge by the Federals, we were mounted each behind a trooper. Soon after we had recrossed the river and had begun meeting the Federal column, a man roughly addressed me and inquired if I wasn't the fellow riding a gray horse in the rear of the Rebel rout on the pike. I said that I was. Thereupon, with oaths, he threatened to shoot me. But my trooper turned upon him fiercely and cocking his carbine ordered him to leave his prisoner in peace or he would blow his brains out. Naturally, I thanked my man for his interference whereupon he said: 'O, I know you well enough; you are Tom Malone, old Jimmie C Malone's son from Athens. I didn't intend that that d____ rascal should hurt you, for you are all good people and kind to poor men like I was. I was a fireman on the Memphis and Charleston road and knew you all very well. I ought to say, continues the narrator, that the man who threatened me was drinking. Personally, I never thereafter met with any insult from any man or officer in the Federal army."

He was sent to Johnson's Island as prisoner of war and there held until he was sent to Richmond on parole for exchange. Meantime the family of his father had been driven from the lovely home at Secluseval by the Federal army, or had fled before it into Georgia, and there his father and mother had both died. He being still under parole, set out from Richmond with two soldier companions in 1865 in an effort to reach the surviving members of the family then temporarily resident on a plantation in Georgia. He at length reached the point of destination after a very trying journey, rendered all the more so by the misfortune of his sole remaining fellow traveler, the other had at their instance gone on, who fell sick of pneumonia on the way and whom he could not be prevailed upon to leave. The collapse of the Confederate States government having shortly thereafter occurred, he, after spending a short while at the Georgia refugee home, set about making arrangements for returning overland with his two youngest sisters who insisted on accompanying him to Secluseval. A long and hazardous journey (for their road lay over Sand Mountain, a region then infested with guerrillas) brought them home at length.

The return home constitutes one of those unspeakably sad pages that ended the war chapter in the lives of so many who risked all on the fate of the Confederacy, written no longer in blood now - that though terrible enough, has the saving grace of color but in that blackness which breeds despair.

Athens, near which lay Secluseval, the once beautiful home of the Malones, a town of some twenty five hundred inhabitants, chiefly planters drawn together there by a desire for the enjoyment of social intercourse and school facilities, was the seat of much culture and wealth. It had excellent schools of its own and in addition, hardly a leading family without a member who had been at one of the great universities and served as a sort of nursery for the State, whence were drawn college professors and presidents, governors, supreme court justices, congressmen, and senators. While there was no ostentatious display of wealth, yet the style of living well comported with social conditions and one might for example see, any bright day on the streets, twenty or more carriages, well appointed with horses that showed the thoroughbred in every movement. This was Athens as he had left it. When he with his sisters entered it again at length at the end of their trying journey in 1865, they read the record of its sufferings on every hand. The wealth of former days had given place to appalling poverty. Scarcely a home had escaped unscathed the vandalism that had followed the infamous license to pillage burn and destroy (“Now boys, I shut my eyes for two hours”), given by the notorious General Turpin (for which he afterwards suffered at the hands of a court martial) upon his entering the town; and in the streets, instead of the handsome carriages and horses with the air of the thoroughbred, where vehicles were seen at all, they were drawn by condemned United States government horses which worn out in the service of their conquerors on the field and hence condemned, branded I C, and sold for a song or given away to the impoverished citizens, seemed designed in the irony of fate to subdue by ungainly gait and look, if further stroke were necessary, that pride which their thoroughbred predecessors in service had helped to engender. The beautiful mansion at their own home had escaped on the occasion above referred to, only to be ruthlessly dismantled and carried away afterwards.

Finding inspiration to effort in what to a soul less brave or less strong had been ground for despair, he set about meeting the question of bread. Reports coming from over the border in Tennessee to the effect that no rebel soldier should ever be permitted to vote or practice any of the learned professions in Tennessee, made it seem doubtful whether he would be able to resume the practice of law in Nashville. Many old friends of his father whose sons had been soldiers and whose education had been thus interrupted, urged him to open a school and teach until he could determine as to his future course, even though it should be only for a few months. He consented. Some of the outhouses that had been used for the house servants at Secluseval, which were lathed and plastered, had escaped destruction, two of these having each two rooms after being first thoroughly cleansed, were prepared one for the young ladies and in the other, one room for a school and the other for a bedchamber for himself. An old friend of the writer, then a boy at Athens, writing of this period says, “He was a born student and it was simply impossible from the first for him to turn away from a thought, a text, or a problem, until he had absolutely mastered it.”

After some months, one term probably thus spent in teaching, political conditions having meantime improved in Tennessee, he returned to Nashville in the year 1865, where he again took up the practice of law and rapidly rose in his profession. Not long after his return, having already established a valuable practice of his own, he entered into co-partnership with the Hon. Abram L Demoss, who had continued at the bar throughout the war and then enjoyed a very lucrative practice. He was thus happily without delay afforded a fine field for the exercise and display of his great abilities.

The reader needs not to be told that his great intellectual ability, manifest as we have seen from boyhood, developed, strengthened and disciplined as it had been by the long and thorough training he enjoyed, and animated by his consuming love for thoroughness, gave him easily a foremost place at the bar. He was of those few who were first at the Nashville bar, which was a very able one, nor can those who knew his powers doubt that he would have held a like place at the bar of New York or other of our great cities, had his lot been cast there, his success there would have been but the same greatness writ in larger type. His great abilities would indeed easily have filled the measure of a larger sphere had ambition but mapped it out, for such was the astuteness and vigor of his mind, the largeness and clearness of its vision, the ease and strength of its grasp, that few were superior to him in the thorough mastering and elucidation of legal principles. Edmund Baxter Esq,. himself a great lawyer of wide experience with, and knowledge of, lawyers who knew Chancellor Malone as only one strong man who has measured swords with another, can speaking of his powers, in this respect said in his own crisp pithy way: “You cannot say too much of him as a lawyer. I have never met a better one.”

The Hon J.M. Dickinson, General Counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and now resident in Chicago, sends the writer the following estimate of Judge Malone:

“My acquaintance with Chancellor Thomas H. Malone began before 1870. I knew him from that time until his death, which occurred in 1906. At the time I first became acquainted with him, he was one of the leaders of the Tennessee bar and had the reputation of being of the highest type, both as a man and a lawyer.

About the year 1874, I entered his office. It was my privilege to become intimately acquainted with him. I had the best of opportunities for judging his conduct in every relation of life, social and professional, and can bear testimony to the fact that no lawyer ever bore the standard of his profession higher, and no man ever lived in any community that had a cleaner character or enjoyed the confidence and respect of the worthy to a greater degree than did Judge Malone. He would have shrunk as from a pestilence from the ways frequently resorted to by many who now assume to be respectable in the profession. His taste led him mainly into the practice in the Chancery, Supreme and Federal Courts. In the early part of his professional career he tried many jury cases but after his reputation became well established as a lawyer he rarely went into the circuit court. He had a large and lucrative practice both as a trial lawyer and counselor and for more than a quarter of a century was conspicuous in the most important litigation of the State. He achieved equal eminence as a teacher of law in Vanderbilt University. A ripe scholar, refined gentleman of most pleasing personality, loyal friend, gallant soldier, able lawyer, accomplished teacher and upright citizen, Thomas H Malone has left a memory that will long abide as an inspiration to the young men of our State. J.M. Dickinson.
Chicago March 7, 1907.

It is not matter of surprise that the Board of Trustees of Vanderbilt University, when they came to select some one alike eminent for learning and high character to organize and preside over the School of Law of that institution should have chosen Thomas H Malone. He was elected Dean of that school on May 25, 1875, and resigned in June 1904, about two years before his death, which occurred in September 1906, having given nearly thirty years of his life to that work and while he must of course share with others the honor of its great success, it may, it is believed, be said without being deemed invidious that to its Dean more than to any other its success is due. [Horace H. Lurton succeeded Thomas Malone as dean in 1904 and served until he was named to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1910.]

The inclination to teach was always strong in him and he was peculiarly well fitted for the high office of teacher. First of all, his own clearness of conception, his thorough mastery of whatever subject he essayed and his power of vigorous and accurate speech, were such as to render easy the successful impartation of his knowledge to others. But in addition the high qualities of the man, his love of truth and uprightness, his scorn of everything that smacked of dishonesty or fraud or meanness or chicane, finding ready and hearty admiration in the breasts of young students, not only enhanced the readiness of access to their minds, but gave him entrance to their hearts as well, The high plane moral and intellectual on which his life was projected, created about him an atmosphere that in its wholesomeness and tone was like mountain air and dead was that soul indeed who, breathing it, did not feel its ennobling inspiration.

Desiring to have an expression of opinion touching Judge Malone from the standpoint of those who had been in his classes, the writer requested two of his former students, whom he happened to know, both men of high intelligence, but differing widely in temperament, to give their impressions of him. From their courteous responses, I have the pleasure to quote from the first as follows:

“His knowledge of his subjects was comprehensive and he knew the proper emphasis to place on the different portions of the subject according to their relative importance. He was almost universally popular and admired by the students. He made the impression of an extremely upright and manly man and at the same time a sensitive and sympathetic one.

I think that the influence of Judge Malone's character and personality, as shown in the lecture room, as well as the substance and tone of his teachings and remarks there tended in a marked degree toward developing the manlier and better qualities of the students.”

From the second as follows:

“For two years I sat under his tuition and studied law and studied him. To me then he was a paragon, a splendid combination of mind and heart. To me now with more age, wider experience, and greater knowledge of men and things, seen through the memories of thirteen long years, Colonel Malone was a remarkable man. His was a quick and acute intellect, searching, analytical, and thorough. He saw the gist of a matter at a glance and could not understand why others did not. His modesty was so great that he never imputed to others less intelligence than he was conscious of possessing himself.

His reverence for the truth and the right, his hatred for the false and the wrong, appeared to me his ruling passion.

He never lectured on morals. He taught the law. Yet the law, as he taught it, appeared nothing more than the armor protecting and developing the highest order of morals, and through that armor, there was ever present all the cardinal virtues. And I felt all the time that he was the embodiment of what he taught, that he was giving us of himself and not the fiats of legislatures and the opinions of tribunals.

He possessed in a remarkable degree the power of happy and exact expression. Few words were the vehicle of his thoughts but they were luminous words, simple, chaste, full of meaning, just what was necessary to convey his thoughts. His speeches were short, crisp, conclusive. When he had finished there was nothing to add. The subject had been covered.

Another striking characteristic of Colonel Malone was the heart of him. Wide sympathy and deep tenderness beamed from his face and rang in every word he uttered. We felt that he loved us and we loved him. We were conscious that our teacher was also our friend and felt a deep and true interest in us and our future and that, in trial or misfortune, we could go to him not for advice but for help and receive it.

He possessed a deep rich vein of humor and frequently indulged it in the class room. But his humor had no sting. Irony and sarcasm never entered his pleasantries. And he to whom they were applied laughed as freely and heartily as another.

He was in my day as a student a universal favorite with the student body. We all admired, we all loved him. The law faculty was then a strong one. There was Baxter Reese Smith and Malone. The others we thought strong men, learned, all good lawyers, one of them a great lawyer, all uncommon men, But in Colonel Malone we saw all these things and we reverenced him.

A life that can command a tribute at once so beautiful and so manifestly sincere is a tribute unto itself.

In the year 1894 the office of Chancellor of the Chancery Division of the State of Tennessee, which embraced the county of Davidson, and with it the city of Nashville having been rendered vacant by a deplorable tragedy, and existing conditions giving peculiar emphasis to the necessity for a man of exalted character as well as learning to fill the vacancy, thus occasioned a spontaneous demand for the appointment of Thomas H Malone to the place arose, and the Governor of the State in response thereto appointed him Chancellor, to serve until the next general election should occur. Together with his great learning and ability he brought to the bench to which he was thus elevated the highest sense of the obligations of the judicial office. To him the ermine was as the vestments of him who ministers in sacred things, and justice felt no tremor in his hands and though irritation might sometimes provoke from his sensitive, high strung nature, sharpness of speech, with keen regret to him, as his friends knew, yet counsel whether the wind was in the East or in the West, never doubted his righteousness of purpose.

He presided with great dignity and was strict in the enforcement of such rules as he deemed necessary to secure the fair, orderly and prompt disposition of business, His decisions were clean cut, vigorous and learned, with the strong, clear, dominant note of justice running through them. He retired from the bench at the end of the period for which he was appointed and did not offer for reelection.

Being a large shareholder in the Nashville Gas Company, and feeling some concern as to its management and hence desiring a place on its board of directors, he made his wishes known to a certain stockholder who practically controlled the company, upon the death of a director in the fall of 1897. He was given to understand, upon his prompt refusal to agree, if elected, to do certain things that this stockholder proposed to do, that it would be seen to, that he was not elected. He was elected a director notwithstanding, at the next annual meeting, and on the next day, was elected president of the company by the board. Soon after his election, the discovery by him that through some flaw in the caption of the Act of Incorporation, the Gas Company's charter was on the eve of expiring when all concerned had thought it would run for fifty years longer, precipitated a crisis in the affairs of the company from which it is doubtful whether it could have been successfully extricated but for his open, frank, and honest course in the matter, and for the public support and sympathy his well known integrity commanded. As soon as it became known that the charter was near its expiration, three rival organizations, one of which was deemed to have well nigh controlling influence with the City Council, made public application for a contract with the city. The Chamber of Commerce, after a full and free statement from him as to what he wished to do, lent its aid to Judge Malone, and even former law students rallied to his support. A gentleman officially connected with the company and familiar with its history writes as follows:

"His friends and the people of Nashville generally believed in him and were willing to trust him to do the right thing. At one time during the fight, a certain party was sent to Judge Malone to tell him that by the payment of $18,000 he could get any contract he wanted and get it for any length of time. The man who was commissioned to make that proposition to him would not go to Judge Malone in person but requested me to lay it before him. I did so knowing very well what his reply would be. It was this: ‘No, no; you tell the dirty rascal that I wouldn’t give one single cent for any contract. Before I would do a thing like that or permit this company to do such a thing, I would sink the company to the lowest depths of hell. I’ve always been an honest man and I propose to go to my grave an honest man and not a briber.’

"Well, as you know, Judge Malone secured the contract. He took the company entirely out of politics at once. Under his able management it doubled its output within three years and at the time of his death it was in good shape and business was increasing monthly.

His influence was worth a great deal to the company. Every one who knew him had the utmost confidence in his judgment & his integrity, and his influence in the office was invaluable."

Judge Malone was twice married, first in June 1866 to Miss Ellen Fall who died in 1898, of which marriage four children, two daughters and two sons, survive him; and again in 1900 to Mrs Milbrey Ewing Fall who survives him.

Judge Malone was a great lover of books and it is doubtful whether any other person in his city had a richer store of learning than he. He took up the study of German when past sixty and found pleasant recreation in German novels. His mind was so generously infused with classical learning that classic thought and phrase were inwrought rather than inlaid in his speech. He was himself the master of a chaste and elevated literary style, rich without ornateness, and vigorous as it was elegant. Rich specimens taken from the mine now and then to meet the demands of some special occasion, as the death of an old associate, or the introduction of a distinguished literary guest of the city, and the like, make one lament that the jealous demands of a busy professional life should have left so rich a mine to go unworked. A charming spirited little story giving an account of a fox hunt which he and his long time friend, Mr. Justice Jackson of the Supreme Court of the United States, had together entitled Little Rachel's Debut so pleased Judge J.M. Dickinson by its charm of story and diction that he had it privately printed for distribution among his friends, one of them a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, being so entertained by it that he fell to thinking of it upon awaking at three o clock the next morning after he had read it and being satisfied that he had not taken the whole of it fully in got out of bed, went to his study, got the little story, and went back to bed and did not go to sleep until he had read it thoroughly again.

The cause for his distinguished success must be found primarily of course in the great faculties with which Nature had endowed him but these he so enhanced by the thorough mastery and command of them, which he acquired through severe training and discipline, that the enhancement fell little short of the original endowment. He said of himself:

“I think that on the whole I have attained greater success than my natural talents warranted and I think that this is due to the fact that whatever I am able to do, I can do it all when the exigency seems to require it."

A source of inspiration and strength to him throughout his life was his great love and respect for his father as the following passage from his memoirs touchingly witnesses:

“I am growing old and my health is poor said his father as he parted with him at the end of a short visit home on furlough in the winter of 1863. You are going to battle and danger. It is probable that we shall never meet again. If you should live through this war, I think it will please you always to remember what I now say. You have never in your life caused me a single pang and you have been a source of joy and pride to me always. These are the last words he ever spoke to me. During my long life, I have thought of them many hundreds of times and now when I am more than threescore years and ten they thrill me almost as they did that cold day in January 1863.

Akin to this and constituting at once the great propelling power and the guiding principle of his life was his sacred regard for duty. Proud. Manly, Brave, knowing no master he yet was as a child that heard with anxious ear when Duty spoke.

His personality was of that sort that one feels there was a wholesome freshness a brimming heartiness, vivacity, and force about him that made his salutation like a glass of Vichy and such earnestness and intenseness as made him seem as one set in italics, yet with these so graced and tempered by his charm as to leave no sense of harshness.

He was not popular as men are popular; he lacked alloy to give him larger currency, nor was his name in everybody's mouth, but in the hearts of many, in honor and in love, his name abides.

He was by nature loving and lovable, but high strung withal as finest noted soul or violin must be whose chords would bear no rude or careless touch.

We cannot read the ways of God, nor would we dare declare his judgments, but darkness cannot chill, nor doubt disturb, the faith that wheresoever rest the souls of those who thought upon and who loved whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, there his noble soul has found its resting place.

Thos S Weaver